December 11, 2013 photo of DeShaun Baker, 17, of St. Paul, is a Harding High School student who interned in the summer of 2013 at Xcel Energy in St. Paul through the city's Right Track internship program. Right Track will expand in summer 2014 to place 80 to 100 teen interns in corporate, nonprofit and small business jobs for 6 to 10 weeks, thanks to funding from the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation. (Courtesy of Tony Nelson)

December 11, 2013 photo of DeShaun Baker, 17, of St. Paul, is a Harding High School student who interned in the summer of 2013 at Xcel Energy in St. Paul through the city's Right Track internship program. Right Track will expand in summer 2014 to place 80 to 100 teen interns in corporate, nonprofit and small business jobs for 6 to 10 weeks, thanks to funding from the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation. (Courtesy of Tony Nelson)

DeShaun Baker, a Harding High School student, spent last summer at Xcel Energy in St. Paul, scanning and filing documents and learning the ins and outs of office work.

“All these skills were new to me because I’ve never worked in an office setting,” Baker said during a recent media event.

That internship puts him a step ahead of many of his peers. Nearly a third of St. Paul teens ages 16 to 19 are unemployed — a statistic well above Ramsey County, Minneapolis, state and national averages.

It’s an unfortunate trend that bodes poorly for their future job readiness, but city officials hope to turn that around, hand in hand with the private sector. In addition to 450 state and federally funded summer jobs at parks, libraries and nonprofits, the city of St. Paul partnered with local businesses last year to pilot a new business internship program.

The Right Track summer internships are expanding this year from the corporate sector to include about 30 small businesses. For teens, the application deadline has closed, but the city still is recruiting business partners.

“We already have three times as many applicants as we have jobs. It’s not too late for employers to sign up,” said Catherine Penkert, Right Track project manager.

Right Track kicked off last summer by placing 21 young interns with 14 major employers such as Wells Fargo, US Bank, Ecolab and the Metropolitan Council. This year, foundation funding will allow Right Track to place 80 to 100 young people in internships, including a mix of small businesses and larger corporations.

Smaller employers can apply for up to $1,000 in reimbursement to cover 70 percent of an eight-week, 20-hour-per week summer internship.

The first six weeks of Right Track internships include professional skills training through Genesys Works, a nonprofit job-training center for teens. Last summer’s interns were all going into 11th or 12th grade and had some form of previous work or leadership experience, and most came from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds. The young people were paid at least $7.25 per hour, or an average of $1,400 for the summer. Most internships this year will last 6 to 10 weeks and run between June 16 and August 22.

Penkert said the city has offered youth employment for decades, most recently through the Youth Job Corps program, which began in 2004. The overall goal of Right Track is to create more of a continuum of opportunities, so a young person who begins summer employment with the city in a park or library can move on to a small business or larger employer the next summer, and then continue with his or her job training after that.

Noting that racial employment disparities in the Twin Cities are among the highest in the country, the mayor’s office is also eager to help employers diversify their workforce and bring young people of color up to speed on the skills they will need in the private sector.

The St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce Foundation is contributing $12,000 to the Right Track program, and smaller grants have been contributed by the Bush Foundation, the St. Paul Foundation and the F.R. Bigelow Foundation.

“This is about developing a pipeline,” said Matt Kramer, president of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, during a recent kickoff event for the Right Track program. “Employers are also developing that pipeline of future employees. … (It) starts right now, and pays dividends for the years to come.”

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman recalled walking into the House of Wong Restaurant on Larpenteur Avenue when he was 16 and asking for a job as a busboy. He stayed there for years.

“It was hard work; it was dirty work; it was tiring. But at the end of the day, I learned a lot of lessons about the value of hard work, about what it means to show up to a job on time, learned what it was like to get yelled at by a boss after I dropped a (bunch) of dishes,” Coleman said. “I learned all of those things that, quite frankly, put me on a path to being mayor.”

Council member Chris Tolbert said he adopted the Right Track program as his pet project last year and personally recruited employers through phone calls to business contacts. As for the foundation funding that expands the program to small businesses, “that’s huge,” he said.

To match interns to employers, the city will host a Right Track Youth Jobs Expo on Thursday, and teens invited to attend should have already received a letter in the mail.

ONLINE

Frederick Melo was once sued by a reader for $2 million but kept on writing. He came to the Pioneer Press in 2005 and brings a testy East Coast attitude to St. Paul beat reporting. He spent nearly six years covering crime in the Dakota County courts before switching focus to the St. Paul mayor's office, city council, and all things neighborhood-related, from the city's churches to its parks and light rail. A resident of Hamline-Midway, he is married to a Frogtown woman. He Tweets with manic intensity at @FrederickMelo.

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